NAS Advice

[slaughteredlamb]

I currently have on my iMac:

1x 640GB USB/Firewire drive (connected via Firewire)
1x 250GB USB Drive
1x 2TB Firewire Drive (for backups only)
1x 250GB Internal drive

The 640GB drive is the drive that I use the most but this looks like it's beginning to fail because whenever I turn it on I hear the drives trying to start, then stop, then start, then stop, before finally starting up - once it's running it's absolutely fine though. I'm therefore looking to replace this drive but connectivity on my iMac is becoming an issue and I only really have a spare Firewire connection but Firewire drives are quite a bit more expensive than USB ones.

I'm therefore considering the possibility of a 1TB NAS drive and have seen this one for under £100.

My only concern with NAS drives is with regards to speed. The NAS would be connected to my wi-fi router via CAT5 but my network is only a Wireless G one. The data that would be on this drive will be all my photos (thousands) which I access via Lightroom and Photoshop and my video library which I access via iTunes. The videos are 99% only ever copied to my iPhone for viewing on the train on the way to work rather than for viewing on the iMac but that does occasionally happen too.

Would a NAS drive be suitable for this kind of use, will it be noticeably slower than the current Firewire drive in general usage?

Perhaps most importantly, my 2TB drive is my backup drive through Time Machine, because the NAS would be storing all of my photos it is vital that this too get backed up onto the 2TB drive, but would it be fast enough or would I have to leave the computer on for a couple of days just to backup the data?

[keri]

A NAS over wireless will be very much noticeably slower than a firewire drive

I have a wireless n / gigabit NAS and unless i'm on a cable i find it a bit on the slow side for any significant moving of files

Wireless g is as best 108mbps, but more likely around the 50mbps mark, wireless n is 220mbps ish

Normal firewire is 400mbps, firewire 800 is 800mbps and USB2 is 480mbps

So from that you can get a rough idea of the drop in speed you will experience.


Until recently i would've recommended the Apple Time capsule as that is what i have, but a mate who has one killed on this week and google shows that there are a lot of them failing a couple of months out of warrenty

[slaughteredlamb]

Hmm, this is probably a dumb question but could I connect the NAS to my iMac via a CAT5 cable thus getting Gigabit speeds and still keep my wireless connection to my router? I would access to both at the same time pretty much all the time so wouldn't be able to turn Airport on and off.

[samhs]

I have an Apple Time Machine, and attached to that I've got a 1TB Lacie (against all advice!) NAS with HIPServ. Works flawlessly. The timemachine is wired, but provides a second wifi connection which I use exclusively for media, and I can access the NAS across the web as well - ideal for backing up work and acting as a media server.

[keri]

Hmm, this is probably a dumb question but could I connect the NAS to my iMac via a CAT5 cable thus getting Gigabit speeds and still keep my wireless connection to my router? I would access to both at the same time pretty much all the time so wouldn't be able to turn Airport on and off.

That sounds feasible, but you might have issues accessing the internet, not sure how to tell your mac which route to take to the internet (default gateway and all that lark), in theory you could use a cable between the imac and the time capsule, and link the time capsule via a wireless bridge to your exisiting wireless  thus your imac getting all network and NAS traffic via the ethernet port.

[robwhizz]

Hmm, this is probably a dumb question but could I connect the NAS to my iMac via a CAT5 cable thus getting Gigabit speeds and still keep my wireless connection to my router? I would access to both at the same time pretty much all the time so wouldn't be able to turn Airport on and off.

That sounds feasible, but you might have issues accessing the internet, not sure how to tell your mac which route to take to the internet (default gateway and all that lark), in theory you could use a cable between the imac and the time capsule, and link the time capsule via a wireless bridge to your exisiting wireless  thus your imac getting all network and NAS traffic via the ethernet port.

Shouldn't have any problem accessing the net, it'll be accessing the NAS that becomes the problem. The iMac will be given all it's network settings via the wireless router as per usual via DHCP, but the NAS won't be able to see the router and won't get any settings - I don't know how your NAS is set up but I assume it's via DHCP.
You need to hard code the IP settings to the NAS first. I don't know anything about it, but assume it must have some kind of options to configure network settings.
Give the NAS settings so it doesn't clash with anything already on your network and plug it into your iMac (you may need a crossover cable - depends on the NAS).
If the router is 192.168.0.1 and the Mac is 192.168.0.2 etc. then keep a few addresses clear in case you have anything else attached or decide to add anything. Use something like 192.168.0.20 with a subnet mask 255.255.255.0.
I don't know much about Macs and networking, but if wanted the NAS visible to the rest of the network then you can in theory bridge the ethernet and wireless connections. There may be some Mac people on here that know how to do that and then in theory you could leave the NAS set up to get it's settings via DHCP.
Bridging isn't something I've touched for a very, very long time seeing as switches are so cheap, and I've never tried bridging using wireless so I might just be talking out of my bum.
But still, regardless of bridging, you shouldn't have any problem hooking up you NAS via ethernet as long as you can diddle with it's network settings.

[Rosco]

Yeah you'd probably need a crossover cable as there will be no device to switch the TX/RX lines, and both your wired network card/interface and the NAS will have to be on a different network address (e.g. wireless on 192.168.0.x and wired on 192.168.1.x).. your NAS drive will essentially just be a local drive to the Mac... but that's what I'm guessing you're looking at, having run out of fast local ports

[slaughteredlamb]

Yeah I only really need the drive to be accessed by the Mac. One thing I did find out last night that I had totally forgotten about is that I'm not connecting the existing drive by Firewire after all. Instead I'm using USB but on the back of the drive there is a 3 port USB hub into which I plug my iPhone and memory card reader.

I already have too many USB devices and already have a 4 port hub hanging off one USB port on the back of the Mac and just didn't really want to have another but seeing as the drive I want to replace already has a hub on it I guess there won't really make much difference if I add one or not.

Hmm, need to think about this a bit.

[robwhizz]

both your wired network card/interface and the NAS will have to be on a different network address (e.g. wireless on 192.168.0.x and wired on 192.168.1.x)

I read my reply several times and thought I'd missed something. Completely missed the iMacs network card address. Doh! But yes, put the iMac and NAS on a different subnet.

[spannaa]

Can you not simply open the drive's enclosure and replace the current, failing 640GB HDD with a new 1TB HDD?

[robwhizz]

If you are technically minded then you could look at getting a nice cheap PC - Old and free or a £50 jobbie or something, buy a raid card - around £40 and then you are free to put any kind of drive configuration into it. As large/small and flexible as you want. Mirrored arrays whatever you like.

I'm using an old Athlon PC with a RAID card in it as a media server. 3x 1TB drives in RAID5 array gives me 2TB of fast storage and I can afford 1 drive failure and it'll keep on ticking. A simple drive swap out and it'll rebuild the data. Much cheaper than buying a dedicated NAS and much more flexible.

I've also been looking at this recently:
http://opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/

For a couple of hundred pounds I could build a single box with a 4-5TB array that's solid, fast, has redundancy and would easily serve as media storage and back up etc.
You'd pay £200-300 for a NAS with 2TB and no redundancy.

I think I'm getting away from the point here a little though...